My Boss ME-70

001

Introduction

    I’ve been using Boss effects all of my life.  I think the first one I ever tried was a Chorus Ensemble that a guitarist friend of mine had.  I was instantly hooked.  (This was in the Margaret Becker era, so a Stratocaster through a Chorus was en vogue.)
    My first multi-effects pedal was a Boss ME-50.  Great pedal.
    So when it came time to replace the ME-50 (because I wanted to upgrade, not because it had stopped working) I bought the ME-70 without having even played it before.  Such is my experience with Boss and Roland: I trust them almost without thought.  That’s not to say they can’t make bad products, or that they never have made bad products.

Features

    Out of the box, this baby lacked only one thing I wanted: an acoustic guitar simulator (like the ME-50 had).  But everything else was there in spades.
    The COMP/FX section has compressor, a necessity for me when playing Hillsong stuff.  But it also has a new feature, Lead, which I really like.  The difference between my crunch and lead tone is literally the difference between which, compressor or lead, I have selected.
    Note that of all the pedals I’ve ever played, this one has the best and most realistic effect on sound as you turn your guitar’s volume and/or tone knobs down.  (I haven’t played the ME-80 yet.)  I can stay in crunch sound and back off my guitar’s volume and have very nice cleans, yet another great feature to have for church music, as often the difference in crunch volumes and crunch/lead in the same song requires flexibility.
    The OD/Distortion section dispensed with the ME-70’s almost-patent-infringing naming of the OD/Distortion models, and to my chagrin.  On the ME-50, I’d stay mostly in Tube Screamer, I mean, Screamer mode.  But that’s ok.  Now I stay mostly in Blues mode, though I have strayed into OD-3/Natural modes before.  But mostly, I feel like the Natural mode doesn’t have enough “bite”, so I tend to use Blues mode more.
    What was very impressive were the Lead Amp models (I’ll get to that in a second) and the Lead OD/DIST modes.  I was in heaven playing around in these modes.  Go figure: I’m a huge fan of the guitar solos heard on Journey, Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd, Switchfoot, and other art-guitar leads.  I am also a fan of the Mesa “dozens-of-stages-of-overdrive” sound.
    The other modes work well enough.  Metal modes sound like metal.  I don’t own any guitars that would qualify as “pure metal” guitars except maybe my Showmaster with the Full Shred bridge (Witiw/Rob Zombie maybe?).  My ESP has a JB bridge, and so yes, I can summon some Deftones and Metallica / Megadeth tones.  But I confess that metal isn’t often a place I stray.  As well, plain distortion works well for conjuring some Green Day-ish sounds.
    I confess that I haven’t used the EZ Tone feature very often.  It works as advertised, don’t get me wrong, but usually I don’t need to dial-a-distortion to figure out what sounds best, as church music tends not to stray too far from crunch tone.
    The delays are glorious.  I can use the modulation section to run an analog delay (set all knobs to 50% for a good basic delay) and then run the delay section in a short delay, plus reverb if I want, and I go wild with all the Indie / Hillsong-Mighty-To-Save-uber-delay cleans I want.  Which is very useful, as the “bazillion delays” sound is pretty popular in church music.  Tap also works as advertised, as well as reverse (I’ve used both in church, believe it or not).
    The Modulation section has plenty for whenever I need to modulate, which isn’t often.  The chorus on this pedal works, but it’s not as lush or extreme as I would like.  But that’s OK because I can usually dial in enough to keep me happy.  I don’t often use chorus in church, though, sadly.  Tremolo works great (I’ve used tremolo in church before to get that surf-y sound, and it is great).  I’ve rarely had to use flanger, phaser, rotary, and octave / harmonist in church, but when needed, they work as advertised.
    The factory presets in this pedal are also usually dependable.  For a while, I simply mapped the presets to 1, 2, 3, and 4 and that was what my user preset bank 1 consisted of.  Recently, I’ve started to branch out more and make my own settings, thogh I have to fight my tendency to put all the knobs at 50% for certain pedals.  Switching back and forth is easy.
    As for the amp section, I play live with a Fender Pro Junior, so in some ways I rarely ever even used the amp section, sometimes tasking it with to EQ with a mid-range spike for use as a solo/booster.  But recently I’ve been using the Clean setting to increase how “amp-y” my sound is.  I am thankful there is a Combo and Tweed section, also, so that if I want to dial in someone’s specific sound from a recording, I can easily do that.  Tweed especially sounds nice to me.  Combo almost sounds too heavily simulated, but I am used to my ‘72 Twin Reverb, so my perception might be off.  I didn’t like a more muddy combo amp that one of my previous churches had, so it might be my ears.
    As for the assignable pedal, the settings here are great.  I can put it in -1 octave and move back and forth between a bass sound if I choose (when the bassist isn’t at church).  As well, I can modulate the amount of delay with it, so that helps on some Hillsong stuff where I want to switch between cleans and crunch.  I tend to turn off most, if not all, of my delays when in crunch because of how easily it gets out of hand and takes over the sonic landscape in church.  For some, that might be a bonus, so I’m not here to say this is a bad thing.
    Overall, I love this thing.
    Keep in mind that this thing also has a ⅛” input.  This is great for jamming along with my cell phone or other sound devices plugged in.  In addition, for a while I was running my Akai Mini Play into this to simplify sound production at church, though now I run my Roland System-1 through its own direct box.  But this does simplify things in that for my own gigging purposes, I can run everything through one amp.

Quality

    Here, as usual, the Boss quality is great.  However, there is one minor flaw.  I’ve noticed that foot pedal #2 tends to start to act up maybe once every two years.  This requires disassembling the unit and cleaning it out.  And this is a dangerous proposition because those lights in the pedals are on very long light stalks.  One accidental bump with it disassembled and you might rip the LED off the board, requiring a re-soldering (if you’re lucky) or even a replacement LED.  I have not yet damaged my unit, but it’s worth knowing ahead of time.
    Would this product be worth owning and having to check it in for electronic repair every 6 years or so?  Sure, but I just want people to know that if you take it apart, be very, very careful.

Value

    This thing easily replaces a dozen individual pedals, so it’s already cheaper, and thus better in value.  It also runs on 6 AA batteries, meaning I don’t have to deal with patch cable troubleshooting and multiple 9v replacement / multi-power-supply issues.  It fits in my backpack, making it much more portable than a large pedal board.

Manufacturer Support

    I haven’t needed Boss’s manufacturing support.

Conclusion

    I love this thing, and overall I am still a huge supporter of Boss and Roland products.  I’m very satisfied.

6 September 2019

    I sold this multieffects unit to upgrade to the ME-80.  I miss it, as I didn't realize the ME-80 was larger.